


Same Page

by OnMyShore



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: And Marriage Counselor Apparently, Dialogue Heavy, Episode: s06e08 The Presidential Suite, M/M, Missing Scene, Stevie is a good friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23223265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnMyShore/pseuds/OnMyShore
Summary: Sometimes her best friend is stupid, and his fiance is equally stupid, and somewhere along the way this has become Stevie's problem.Stevie and Patrick talk in the car after the spray tan disaster, because apparently she has to do everything herself.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 8
Kudos: 193





	Same Page

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to post this right after the episode aired, and then I got distracted and forgot to finish it, and now we're all quarantined and I've got a notebook full of half-finished stories, so here we are!

“I don’t want to talk about it” are the first words out of Patrick’s mouth as he brushes past Stevie in a Cheeto-dusted blur, pushing the spa door open with far more force than necessary and stomping out into the parking lot. Stevie’s mouth had dropped open in shock and glee when he’d first come around the corner, but she snaps it shut as she turns back to the baffled young man standing behind the counter.

“His session was paid for already, right?”

He blinks. “Yes.”

“Great. You can just add mine to the credit card on file. Thanks.” Stevie slings her bag over her shoulder and hightails it out of there before he has a chance to argue.

Patrick is standing next to her car, his disgruntled orange face shining like a beacon in the afternoon sun. The natural light makes him look even worse, and Stevie slows down as she approaches, so that he has to stand, scowling, outside her car that much longer. She makes a show of fumbling for her keys, shaking the bag this way and that as she pretends to dig for them, only to pull them out of the front pocket where she always keeps them. Patrick pitches himself into the passenger seat as soon as the doors are unlocked, and she snorts.

“So how’d it go?” Stevie asks as she starts the car, all wide-eyed innocence. Patrick gives her a look that could peel paint.

“Is that a real question?”

“I’m guessing not great.”

“Oh wow, good guess.” He’s in a real snit; Stevie is loving every single second of it.

“How long did you stay in there?” She can’t keep the glee off her face, or out of her voice.

“I don’t know! 15, 20 minutes, maybe?”

“That might have been too many minutes.”

“Do you think?” Patrick’s voice has gone pitchy and slightly hysterical. “Do you think, Stevie?”

Stevie doesn’t bother hiding her laughter. She’s pretty sure it was actually longer than that.

“I’m going to kill him,” Patrick says, once they’ve been on the road for a few minutes and the spa is safely out of sight.

“That seems a little unfair,” Stevie replies, though she’d probably kill David too if their positions were reversed.

“Nothing about this is fair! Stevie, look at my _face_!”

“Kind of hard to avoid it.”

Patrick growls, but it sounds a lot like one of her great-aunt’s French bulldogs, the runty one with the droopy eyes that used to snap at her ankles. “He couldn’t leave it alone. Why couldn’t he just leave it alone?”

“I’m sorry, have you met the man you’re marrying? I mean, have you ever spent any significant amount of the time in the same room together?” Patrick crosses his arms over his chest, jaw clenched. Switching tactics, because her jokes don’t seem to be working, she adds, “Plus, he’s not exactly wrong. When you’re standing together he makes you look like you could glow in the dark.”

“And this is better?!” Patrick snaps, gesturing at his Crayola-colored complexion.

Stevie snickers. “Oh no, this is so much worse.”

“Great,” Patrick huffs as she laughs again. “This is really helpful, thank you.”

“Oh, anytime.”

A few more minutes pass in sullen silence before Stevie starts to think that Patrick plans on sulking all the way back into town. She could let him - if he wants to be an angry little baby, that’s his business. She’s not his therapist. (And she has plenty of practice from dealing with David when he gets into one of his moods.) But something in his frown grabs her attention and refuses to let go. She shakes her head - she’s clearly going soft, and she doesn’t like it.

“Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but I think this was supposed to be David’s way of doing something nice for you.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”

“Dude. Did you actually look at the picture I took? You literally look like a ghost with no eyebrows, and those huge lights that Ray has probably aren’t going to make it any better. And people who see the pictures are going to make their stupid little comments because - surprise - people are assholes. This was David’s way of trying to avoid that for you.” She pauses. “And for him, because this is still David we’re talking about.”

“Then why couldn’t he just say that instead of acting like he was springing a trap on me?”

“Probably because he has good intentions and the worst execution? It’s a Rose family trait, believe me.”

Patrick seems to be mulling this over. Stevie’s content to let him sit there in thought for as long as he wants, but he breaks the silence all too soon. “It’s just frustrating.”

“Gonna need you to be a little more specific.”

“I mean all this wedding stuff.”

“Didn’t I _just_ ask you to be more specific?”

Patrick makes a frustrated sound and rubs the back of his neck. “It’s just...I know David loves me. And I love him, and I do believe his intentions are probably good. But sometimes it’s like…”

“He gets caught up in his own bullshit?” Stevie finishes for him.

“ _Yes._ ” It comes out like a sigh of relief. “That’s exactly it.” Fingers twisting together, he adds, “Planning a wedding is what ended my last relationship.”

Stevie frowns. “I thought being gay is what ended your last relationship.”

“Okay, obviously,” Patrick says, sounding so much like David that Stevie isn’t sure if she wants to laugh or puke. “I mean, planning the wedding is what made me realize that I couldn’t marry her.”

Stevie gives him a non-committal, “Oh?”

“When Rachel and I were engaged,” Patrick continues, sounding like he’s talking half to himself, “she wanted me to be involved with everything. I mean - everything. Every little detail, no matter how small. She kept asking my opinion on things like the color of the napkins and if they should match the tablecloths.”

“I feel like that would look weird.”

Patrick ignores the comment. “And I knew it was coming from a good place, like she wanted me to have as much say in our wedding as she did and it was sweet of her, you know? To want me to feel involved? But it got to be too much. I felt like I was going to lose it every time she showed me pictures of flowers or asked about the cake.”

“I’d kill for some cake right now,” Stevie mutters.

“I thought that maybe the whole wedding planning process had been so awful the first time around because I knew deep down that I was marrying the wrong person. And I’m happy to let David take the lead because he has much stronger opinions on this stuff than I do.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“But I don’t know, Stevie. Lately I feel like I’m just as stressed out now as I was before, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Stevie takes a long moment to consider her next words. Finally, tightening her hands on the steering wheel, she says, “Are you having second thoughts?”

“What?” Patrick whips his head around to stare at her, eyes wide in genuine shock. “No, I’m not having second thoughts! Why would you even ask that?”

“So you still want to get married?”

“More than anything!”

“To David?”

“Of course to - who else? Who else would I be marrying? Of course to David!”

“Okay, take it easy.” Stevie relaxes her grip, noting how her knuckles have gone a little bit white. She doesn’t want to admit how relieved she is to hear him say it and mean it. This whole trip could have taken a very dark turn.

“I just thought it would feel different this time around. I want to marry him so much, and I don’t know why I’m not as excited about the actual wedding as he is.” Patrick sounds frustrated now, and a little bit sad, and he lets his head fall back against the window with a dull _thunk._ Stevie winces, both at the sound and the orange smudge he’s probably leaving on the glass.

“Maybe you’re not a wedding guy,” she finally says. Patrick glances at her without lifting his head, and she shrugs. “Not everyone is. Just seems like you’re more into the idea of _being_ married than _getting_ married.”

“That’s...maybe. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.” He sighs again. “Sometimes I feel like I just want to be done with it, you know? Like we could just skip ahead to the part where we’re already married and everything feels settled.”

“Yeah, that would be really great,” Stevie says. “But that’s not the kind of person David is, which you knew going into this. He wants the drama, and he wants to be fussed over, and he wants the whole day to be perfect.”

“And I want him to have that. If it matters to him, it matters to me too.”

“Even if it’s stupid?” Stevie interjects, and Patrick snorts a laugh.

“I want him to be happy,” he says after a moment. “He deserves to be happy, and I want to give that to him. I just don’t like being treated like Paris Hilton’s purse dog.”

“A surprisingly astute pop culture reference, even if it’s about ten years too late.”

“Great, thanks,” Patrick huffs, turning back to the window. The silence carries on for a few more miles before Stevie clears her throat. “Have you thought about maybe discussing any of this with David?”

“Do I look like I have a death wish?”

“You’ve sort of looked like you want to die since we left the salon, is that the same thing?”

“I do not look like that.”

Stevie rolls her eyes. “I’d say look in the mirror but that seems like a bad idea given the circumstances.”

“You’ve been very helpful today, Stevie, thank you.”

“You are welcome.” And she could leave it there, let Patrick stew in his mild-mannered business nerd rage, but sometimes her best friend is stupid, and his fiance is _equally_ stupid, and somewhere along the way all of this this has become her problem. “Do you want me to talk to him?”

Patrick looks at her, eyebrows raised, but then he shakes his head. “I can have a conversation with my fiance, but thank you.”

“So this conversation we’re having right now is just a dress rehearsal?” Patrick opens his mouth and closes it again, like a goldfish that’s found itself outside of its bowl. “Because you know you’re going to have to talk about it eventually.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m just saying, historically, not talking about things hasn’t really worked out great for either of you.”

Patrick’s expression has started to shift from angry chipmunk to wounded puppy, and Stevie absolutely does not want to deal with that. “Okay, two things. One, you’re usually the one who reins David in when he starts to spin out of control. He doesn’t listen to anyone the way he listens to you - like, literally anyone. You’re the one who keeps him grounded.”

“Oh?” There’s a hint of amusement curled around the irritation in his voice.

“Compared to what he was like when he first got here? Believe me, it’s true. You have no idea.” She doesn’t know how to describe the way Patrick has softened David’s edges, teasing out his knack for taking care of the people he loves, hidden for so long beneath a veneer of sarcasm and derision. Which brings her to her second point.

“Two,” she says, in case Patrick forgot there was another part, “I know David has been very...David about the wedding, and I know how frustrating that can be. But you’re right, he does love you, and I think if you were unhappy, he would want to know about it.”

Patrick swallows, looking at his shoes. “I’m not unhappy. It just feels like we haven’t been on the same page lately.”

“So get on the same page.”

“What, just like that?”

Stevie shrugs. “Why not?”

Patrick makes a sound in his throat like he agrees with her but doesn’t want to admit it out loud, the bastard, but then he flips down the visor and groans. “That conversation might have to wait until I’m a little less...orange.”

“Still pissed?”

“Oh yeah.” He flips the visor back up and flounces back in his seat with his arms crossed. Stevie waits until they’re approaching the town sign before saying, “I wonder if they can see you from space.”

“Okay, you know what?” Patrick says as Stevie cackles at her own joke. “How about if we just didn’t talk for the rest of the ride?”

Fine with Stevie. This has been too much damn conversation for her tastes anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Much like Patrick, I don't know how long is too long for a spray tan. If my numbers are way off, just assume Patrick was too pissed off to accurately monitor the time and we'll leave it at that, thanks so much.


End file.
